24 October, 2016

Funtasia Daily Three Year Anniversary

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Three years? Three years. It's kind of hard to imagine, isn't it? Way back in October 2013, when the first Filly Funtasia trailer reached the internet, people began discussing it and a proto-fandom was born. With it, came this website. Things have changed a lot from those early days of confusion and frenzy, but I still like to think back to the time when Filly Funtasia (and this website!) was new and strange and got attention from many places on the internet. While writing this article, I came to think of one of those places which linked to me early on. I remember them asking sarcastically where my website would be in a year's time. I went to go and find a screenshot of that post so I could snicker at it in this introduction... but unfortunately that wasn't possible, as that forum has been offline for a while. But we're still here! As always when this day arrives, let's take a look back at the last year, and a look ahead:

Usually, an anniversary comes shortly after a major Filly Funtasia revelation. This is of course because this website was founded shortly after the 2013 MIPCOM and its associated trailer, and subsequent anniversaries have happened right after other MIPCOM revelations. It seems that BRB has chosen not to showcase Filly Funtasia at this year's MIPCOM, which (along with other recent events) has left future of the series rather uncertain. While this is inevitably going to cast a shadow on any anniversary celebration, I still want to take the time to appreciate the work that's been put into it, no matter what's going to happen.

Because while the official Filly Funtasia releases this past year have been limited to a brief holiday video and the news at MIPTV that there are now two 75 minute specials planned (whose current status is rather unclear), we have found out more about the production through the rather unofficial release of material that sheds more light on the production process. Considering all that we've seen, I think it should be safe to say that a lot of effort and love has been put into this thing, and I really hope that the difficulties that are preventing it from reaching completion and release are resolved - be they production difficulties, licensing difficulties (as has occasionally been hinted), or other difficulties. It would be a damn shame if all this effort did not reach fruition.

That is why we want to take the opportunity to celebrate Filly Funtasia. And we want to do so by finally fulfilling a promise - the promise of this website's name. But first, let's discuss the name. The name of this website has been a matter of debate lately. Isn't it too similar to that other website? (No, not Pet Shop Daily, the other one.) Well, sure. When I started this website, I didn't consider the long term implications of what I was doing as much as I perhaps should have.

I was a daily browser of /mlp/ and regarded my interest in Filly as simply an extension of the same fandom. Now, perhaps that would have been naive, even back then, considering the already existing schism between the brony fandom and the MLP toy collector fandom, fueled by persistent expressions of disdain towards earlier generations by brony fansites. But I did not keep that inevitable tendency toward internet tribalism in mind - I saw this new franchise as simply another fun thing for bronies to engage in.

I've stopped watching MLP:FiM and stopped participating actively in that fandom since over a year ago, so perhaps it could be considered be a good idea to rename this site to clearly separate it into its own thing and remove additional ammunition for anyone accusing Filly Funtasia of being a ripoff. Well, I've decided not to do that. First of all, this is a fansite. People kept assuming that this was somehow an official site, so I've had to add a disclaimer about that. If this website is unoriginal and derivative, that just means that we are unoriginal and derivative. The makers of Filly (Funtasia) have no influence on how we design our website.

Secondly, fandoms are very frequently inspired by previous fandoms in matters of terminology as well as other things. Considering that the people currently participating actively in Filly fan activities seem to mostly be current or former MLP fans and also considering the history of our community, it's going to be hard to dissociate ourselves completely from MLP, and I don't think that even is something we should aim for. There's naturally going to be a overlap (large from our point of view, small from their point of view) between our tiny community and the relative behemoth (albeit a slowly shrinking behemoth) that is the brony fandom. At least that's what I think. Hey, I could be wrong. Let's have a quick poll to gauge the current situation:

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And if Filly Funtasia is ever released (and I sure hope it is), the brony fandom is realistically where most interested people are going to come from. Sure, there are other large fandoms, but in those, most people are going to care little about some new horse cartoon. There might be other communities dedicated to horses or girls' cartoons that may be even more receptive to Filly Funtasia, but they're rather small. The brony fandom is where Filly Funtasia would be polarizing - there'll probably be a decent chunk of people who are interested to some extent, but there'll also be people who don't like it very much, and a small minority who'll probably be rather angry about its existence. Because of that, that's where you're most likely going to get the initial growth of a fandom (and hatedom) from. The really angry people only represent themselves and are going to find excuses to be angry no matter what we do, so I don't really want to consider them when making any decisions. As for the rest, I want to provide a welcoming environment for people who want to join the fun or who are just curious about this thing, and why not do so by providing familiar venues?

Thirdly, there's name recognition and search engine presence. When people go looking for Filly Funtasia, I want there to be some kind of informative source that's easy to find and that they might recognize from before. There's unfortunately not that many of them. It'd be a shame if people who went searching for information on Filly Funtasia only found articles making fun of it.

And also, Scorpio would be sad if we renamed our site.

But let me get back to the promise of this website's name. You see, it's all about the second part of its name - "Daily". It's always bothered me a bit, to be honest. Not because it's similar to any other site's name, but because it's not really true. It's not daily. It has never updated daily. Well, for a limited time, that will change. Tomorrow, we're going to post something new. And after that, we're going to try to post something each day until we can't anymore. We'll see how long that lasts. I don't know that myself at this point. Expect to see your daily posts at some point during European evenings.

Also related to the subject of Filly and its relation to MLP, let me restate an offer I've already made in more private settings in a more public place: I definitely want to see the concept of magical horses (or hell, cute magical creatures in general, or even other kinds of cartoons and other media with a similar feel) expand into a genre of its own. While I'm not abandoning Filly Funtasia anytime soon, I'm happy to help out if anyone wants to set up a fansite dedicated to a related franchise. (Well, as long as it's not FiM, that really has enough fansites by now.)

Well, that's pretty much what I have to say. Things are looking very uncertain in the world of Filly Funtasia right now, and I have no idea what the situation is going to look like for this site's fourth anniversary. In the second anniversary article, I hoped that Filly Funtasia would be released when the third anniversary came around. That clearly didn't happen, and I don't know if I dare have any similar hopes for the next one anymore.

But as always, I want to thank everyone who's been reading this site, everyone who's contributed to this little community in any way, and everyone who's just keeping their interest up despite the seemingly endless delays. No matter what happens next, I've had fun discovering this magical world with you.